Popular social commentator and founder of the Legal Advocacy Foundation, Lawyer Maurice Ampaw has described the events and incidents of blatant vote-buying that accompanied the just ended parliamentary primaries of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in some constituencies as bizarre.
According to him, the practice which is fast becoming a part of Ghana’s democratic dispensation must be criminalized to put persons who openly share goodies for votes or even declare to have given something to delegates to influence their decisions before the laws of the country.
Moments after the elections on last Saturday, some aspirants began complaining that some delegates had received their monies and other goodies with the intention of voting for them but failed and threatened to take their gifts back.
In the Assin North Constituency, an aspirant went back for all the bicycles he donated to delegates after an embarrassing defeat; Eric Amankwa Blay had shared 250 bicycles to delegates prior to the election to each of the polling stations in the constituency.
He secured 44 votes as against the incumbent MP Abena Duruwa Mensah who polled 389 votes.
Speaking in an interview with Kumasi-based Angel FM after the development, Lawyer Maurice Ampaw said anybody who boldly comes out to say he paid bribes to delegates for their votes must be treated as criminals.
He said those politicians are not different from the judges who were sacked for taking goats and other gifts to influence their judgments at the courts.
